The great majority of wheels produced for automotive vehicles include a metal rim, a tubeless tire mounted on the rim, and a valve stem projecting through an aperture in the rim to communicate with the interior of the tire and permit inflation.
In the past, automobile wheels have been assembled using primarily manual labor. In particular, the mounting of the valve stem to the rim has been accomplished by a hand-held stem inserter tool such as that disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,852,839 and 4,807,343. Similarly, the mounting of the tire on the rim has involved a worker placing the rim in a fixture, positioning the tire partially over the rim, and actuating a machine for pressing the tire downwardly into position around the rim. Manual processes are expensive due to the high cost of manual labor and amount of cycle time involved in completing the assembly of one tire on a rim, and are subject to human error potentially producing defective wheels.
It is desirable to adapt modern robotic and machine vision systems to automate the manufacture of mounted tires.